Face of Fire

Monk Johnson is a well liked villiage handyman. He heroically saves a doctor's son from a house fire but in the process his face is horribly disfigured. He is then ostracized and considered a monster.

• Cameron Mitchell as Ned Trescott
• James Whitmore as Monk Johnson
• Bettye Ackerman as Grace Trescott
• Miko Oscard as Jimmie Trescott
• Royal Dano as Jake Winter
• Robert F. Simon as Judge Hagenthorpe
• Richard Erdman as Al Williams
• Howard Smith as Sheriff Nolan
• Lois Maxwell as Ethel Winter
• Jill Donohue as Bella Kovac
• Harold Kasket as Reifsnyder
• Aletha Orr as Martha
• Charles Fawcett as Citizen in Barbershop
• Vernon Young
• Robert Trebor as Dr. John
• Doreen Denning as Kate
• Lorena Holmin as Carrie
• Hjördis Petterson as Mrs. Kovac

Albert Band had written the script for Red Badge of Courage (1951) based on the novel by Stephen Crane and wanted to make a film of Crane’s short story “The Monster.” He found some finance in Stockholm, Sweden and decided to make the film there. Most of the lead cast were imported from Hollywood. They included Richard Erdman who recalled:

Shooting a movie in Sweden was surprisingly the same sort of thing as shooting in Hollywood, except they had longer lunches. [Production] would start mid-morning and go ’til about one, and then knock off for a couple of hours, and then come back and shoot ’til like 11 o’clock at night. About half of the Swedish people working on the movie spoke fairly good English, of course, almost none of us [Americans] spoke Swedish. But we didn’t have a language problem that I remember.